So, this is a "virus" that is nothing more than something that programmatically attaches/appends itself to other files that are in the same directory as itself when executed (which is easy to do and doesn't rely on any deficiency in the system), isn't in the wild and therefore doesn't have any real impact on users, is a proof-of-concept, and still has no vector or mechanism for propagation, much less mass-propagation?

Wow. Um. Raise the alarm. One if by land, two of by sea, and all that.

Oh, and here's my new piece of nasty Mac OS X malware:

Place this in a text file and name it ElectricSlide.command:

rm -rf ~/*

Double click it. Voilà. A piece of malware that can't actually spread that deletes the contents of your home directory with no warning!

Maybe we can see a Symantec warning about OSX.ElectricSlide!

I realize Symantec or any AV vendor has to catalog known malware, but come on: the coverage this is getting is ridiculous, and now the front page of slashdot?

Mac OS X certainly has vulnerabilities. The people saying it doesn't are morons. But the problem is that any vulnerability discovered in any Apple product gets amplified in the press massively disproportionately. For example, the iPod Windows virus issue:

By all accounts, there was likely a Windows PC used for QA at a non-Apple contractor that was infected with a virus that was infecting iPods with the virus when they were plugged in to that machine. (If anything, this is a problem in the QA process at Apple's manufacturing contractors, not ANY indication that "Macs" or Apple are any more susceptible to viruses or attacks, in any way, shape, or form - I'm surprised at the level of shoddy journalism on this. This is a Windows worm copying itself to a locally attached Windows disk (that happens to be an iPod), nothing more. Yes, it's really bad for any manufacturer to ship something with a virus on it, but this doesn't indicate the susceptibility of Apple or Macs in general. If anything, it indicates the iPod is effective as a USB-attached disk. Which it is. Again, no excuse for the processes to let something like this happen, but still.)

Then, the coverage of this goes on to rehash the (incorrect) assumption that someday there will be a huge worm outbreak on Macs, an assertion that is completely unrelated to iPods being infected with a Windows (or even Mac) virus.

I'm not going to rehash why it's literally impossible for the type of devastating mass-propagating worms that we've seen on Windows happen on Macs; marketshare/presense alone is enough to make that argument, but marketshare is only one of many factors.

I predict that we'll continue seeing these sky-is-falling and "WAKEUP CALL FOR APPLE" articles month after month and year after year, with nothing actually happening of any consequence to the installed Mac OS X base. Will there be new viruses, worms, malware, and proofs of concept of malicious items for Mac OS X? Yep. Absolutely. Just as there have been. Will there be something that can mass-propagate to the point where it costs the tens/hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of manhours in recovery and lost productivity like we do on Windows? Nope. The architectural, use, marketshare, and security differences on the Apple platform versus Windows ensures that.

The coverage of this will likely be further classic examples of press jumping on any negative or security-related story that has to do with Apple.

Maybe this will even be the sixth or seventh, by my count, "FIRST MAC OS X VIRUS" story that can be trumpeted around on CNN, AP, and Reuters! One can only hope!

Also, before anyone says "There's also a Bluetooth 0day [sans.org] for OS X," that would actually be the same, months-old, single Bluetooth issue that has already been reported on months ago, and that was patched in all versions of Mac OS X for a year even at the time that the worm,

Trojans will still be trojans and users will still be able to tricked into doing Bad Things.

Hopefully, even that will be mitigated to some degree by 10.5's MAC and application signing technologies. I'm not counting on it, but at least for power users it will let us run untrusted code safely and if Apple pulls a rabbit out of their hat, it could conceivably do the same for even novice users making trojans a really hard social engineering challenge.

Mac OS X certainly has vulnerabilities. The people saying it doesn't are morons. But the problem is that any vulnerability discovered in any Apple product gets amplified in the press massively disproportionately.

The truth of this argument is, as inherently insecure as Windows may be, the argument shouldn't be about vulnerabilities. It should be about time from vulnerability acknowledgment until correction. That being said, Mac didn't take this stance. They took the "we don't get viruses" high road. I'

Every time there's one of these crazy non-virus viruses that gets trumpeted I think how the whole thing indicates how much MORE secure (not perfect, of course, as you mentioned) OS X is than Windows.

A new Windows virus that can actually do some damage? News item. OS X proof-of-concept-lame-trojan? Hullabaloo. Hopefully that will keep up. When we get to the point where non-issues aren't mentioned and major ones are routine it will be time to go in search of a new OS.

What I said has nothing to do with whether something needs privilege escalation or not. At all.

In fact, my own little "rm -rf ~/*" joke doesn't require any privilege escalation at all and can delete the contents of your home directory with no further warning. Something as simple as that can be bundled up with Platypus by anyone who can click a mouse as a little trojan that looks like any other Mac OS X application.

Think that's "stupid"? It's just as stupid as this "virus" proof-of-concept that does nothing more than show that it can be appended to a file. It doesn't spread, and has no vector for propagation. Before you say "well, all someone has to do is find a vector!"

this "virus" proof-of-concept that does nothing more than show that it can be appended to a file. It doesn't spread, and has no vector for propagation.

No vector for automatic propagation, perhaps. I'm old enough to remember viruses back in the days before the Internet and email, though, when they were spread via infected floppies. Hell, just the other week there were stories here about a McDonalds flash-based mp3 player that shipped with a virus, and another about an infected batch of iPods.

When are you nitwits going to get it through your head that there's no such word as "virii"?

Sure there is. It's a jargon word to refer to more than one computer virus (note: not more than one biological virus.)

And yes, it's incorrect Latin, but the word "television" was created by incorrectly mashing a Latin word together with a Greek word. Nobody cares that it's not a "real" word. Usage makes it real. That's English for you.

Rambing? It was an example of how something utterly technically unrelated is used as an excuse to push Apple into the security spotlight again, claiming that because a QA machine infected with a *Windows* virus at one of its contractors means "Apple" is being targeted more by "hackers". (???)

Your turn, please describe, specifically, why you felt compelled to post such an enormous amount of text in the first place?

This isn't the "first" proof-of-concept for OS X that meets the definition of a "virus". There have been previous examples of malware that has specifically inserted code into other things on the filesystem (the hallmark of a "virus").

What I want to know is, when will we stop hearing about each and every new piece of malware for Mac OS X when they're not even novel, new, or interesting anymore?

I'll make you a deal - I'll stop being interested in them when you stop feeling compelled to tell me they aren't of interest.

Witty, but how exactly is this interesting?

The point wasn't, "This isn't a virus," it's, "Why is this on the front page of slashdot?"

This isn't like someone trying to say "nothing to see here, move along" to cover up a story; rather, there really is nothing here. Sure, it's a "virus", technically, with no means of propagation that doesn't do anything particularly new or interesting in

This isn't the "first" proof-of-concept for OS X that meets the definition of a "virus".

This doesn't even meet the definition of a virus at all. A virus has to not only attach itself to some other file, but also to spread. As you said in another post, there is no vector with which this thing can spread (aside from direct user intervention).

At best, this is proof of concept for a very primitive trojan: please download me, make me executable, then execute me. Pretty please? I'll do great things for you, I

Both viruses and worms require automatic propagation. The distinction lies in what code performs the propagation.

Viruses take advantage of weak spots in other executable code. Macro viruses exploit a word processor's macro system. Boot sector viruses exploit the computer's boot loader. In every case, though, the virus takes advantage of some piece of already-existing piece of software that executes code automatically, usually without direct control or knowledge from the user.

A worm OTOH, is its own executable. It's essentially a self-replicating daemon. It does exploit weaknesses in a system's remote-execution code to propagate, but it doesn't require an interpreter. All it has to do is write its executable text to a block of memory, then trigger a fault which causes that block of memory to be treated as an executable.

Automatic propagation is the hallmark of a worm or virus, though. If Macarena can propagate every time someone opens an infected file, it's a virus. If you have to run a specific infection program to attach the payload to other files, it's not a virus, it's just a program that appends unwanted crap to other files.

Actually, a 'computer virus' is something that attaches/appends itself to other files, and has some method for self propagation. By your definition, the cat command could be a virus as well, in which case every version of OS X has come bundled with a number of viruses.

The infected files must be active -- that is, they must be capable of infecting other files. These ones aren't. This isn't a virus, it's a do-nothing trojan.

Worms are similar to viruses but they spread themselves. Viruses require the user to spread something, like a disc or file, but then they take care of the infection. Trojans, on the other hand, don't propagate -- the original program must be run for each infection.

Actually, I think that's technically known as a worm. Viruses, in turn, are a damaging form of worm.

No, not at all. A worm propagates itself without the need to attach itself to a host container. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has an adequate introduction. The misused/abused common meaning aren't terribly useful for this kind of discussion.

Ooooh noooo, a virus! Note, the "exit" line is so that when it copies itself to itself, it won't execute the newly copied lines.

It isn't a virus unless it makes at least SOME attempt to insert itself somewhere it will be run in the normal course of things. For instance, in earlier versions of OS X, there were a lot of directories and files that were writable by group "admin", which anyone who is marked as an administrator is in (withou

You'll want to insert yourself at the beginning of the file to be sure you run, not at the end. And it would be helpful to make sure it's a shell script you're modifying so you don't trash the host file functionality.

For instance, in earlier versions of OS X, there were a lot of directories and files that were writable by group "admin",

You have just received a Mac OS X virus. Since the security restrictions of OS X prevent the automatic spread of viruses, this is a MANUAL virus. Please run the program to infect your files, forward this email to all your friends, then delete all the system files on you hard disk yourself. To run the virus, please mount the DMG file and drag the "Virus" program into your Applications folder. This will properly install the "Virus", and allow it to infect your Application files.

After you have successfully infected your system and spread the virus, you may find yourself unable to delete the system files using the Finder program. In this case, you must open a terminal and follow the instructions below:

Should you run into technical difficulties with infecting your Macintosh, you can visit our online help website at http://www.infectmymacwithanastyvirus.com./ [www.infect...yvirus.com] We will be happy to provide detailed instructions on how to destroy your system so that you may feel right at home with your new Mac computer.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

--Mac OS X Hackerz

Attachment: Virus.DMG

P.S. If you don't get the joke, please read the article and virus report.

1. It is not possible to run an application directly from an email. It must be either dearchived to a.APP folder, or marked as executable.2. You can only modify your own files. The system files are protected against user modification. Programs looking to modify the OS need a user marked as administrator to enter his password. The password is sent directly to SUDO to give the temporary permissions required.

3. The Mac has no open ports by default. Which means no Web Server worms, no buffer overflows, no pass

Bullshit on your bullshit, my good bullshitting sir. You underestimate the amount of bullshit that the Mac will put you through in order to run a bullshit application attachment.

All you need to do is convince the user to save an archive attachment. extract it and run the contents.

You missed a few steps. In order to simply run the attachment, you need to:

1. Save the archive attachment.2. Ignore the warning about an "unsafe application" given by Safari or Mail.app.3. Mount the DMG file or unzip the ZIP file.4. Still not realize that the dearchived file is not a document despite looking exactly like an application.5. Run the application.

Okay, so now the user has infected their system. Sort of. Their documents may be infected, but those are useless to the virus. They can't be executed, and the user isn't likely to pack up his.APP folders and share them with all his friends. Effectively, the virus has stopped spreading. So what is a virus to do? Under a Windows system, it would get ahold of the Outlook address book and mail itself to everyone. Alternatively, it would want to stay resident after reboots and/or collect information about the user's activities. Under a Mac, these things need elevated privileges to do. So the virus would have to:

6. Invoke the SUDO app to request elevated privledges.7. User would need to fill their password into the prompt.8. Virus would infect the necessary files to do its dirty work of spreading.

At this point, however, the user is so stupid he belongs in a mental facility. He's already ignored half a dozen explicit and implied warnings that something is wrong, just to ensure that this virus can take over his system! That's one determined user!

Some people may believe that Mac users are really that dumb, but if that were the case then viruses would already run rampant. Instead, we get an impotent "proof of concept" that can't actually spread itself. All it can do is damage your files. For a proof of concept, that's pretty pathetic.

From there the worm can easily spread on OSX, and no, root would not be required to do so.

As I've mentioned twice now, that's blatently incorrect. It can "infect" your documents, but system files require elevated privileges. "Infecting" your documents does nothing more than damage your files, and the virus can't even stay resident (or stop the user from killing it on the Dock!) without a password. So it's effective impotent and contained unless it can trick the user into giving it his/her password.

A number of years ago, IBM Canada ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).

The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."

There are Linux viruses in the wild, you just have to be a complete idiot to get them. I have had the pleasure (hey this doesn't happen often) of seeing an old Linux install that had one when the company I worked for was hired as an outsourced IT department.
Ok, technically it was a back door, and for the curious, this was it: http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/defau lt5.asp?VName=ELF_RST.B [trendmicro.com]

Anybody can create a virus for OS X, and it can run perfectly. The biggest problem would be how it can be able to spread to other machines.

On Windows, it isn't viruses that plague Windows, but it is worms, spyware, and adware that affects that platform. All it takes to be infected with a computer virus on any platform is to not be vigilant about the data that you download. Being infected by spyware and adware, however, relies on the security of the browser, and being infected with a worm relies on the security of the operating system's Internet connectivity.

OS X remains relatively secure because its browser does not have hooks to the shell (unlike older versions of Internet Explorer, although I've read that Internet Explorer 7 has been decoupled from the shell), and because its Unix core isn't susceptible to worms (Unix has come a long way since the worm of 1988). OS X also has a firewall, although I just learned that it isn't enabled by default (but turning it on is easy; they should change the default in OS X 10.5).

A demo virus for OS X or Linux isn't news. No operating system can block the execution of a virus unless the operating system has a list of trusted applications that it knows are virus-free. An operating system can prevent worms with better security, and spyware can be prevented by using a secure browser, but viruses cannot be blocked from execution.

I believe he is referring to the way that Windows Explorer (the shell) handles "executable" files. Faced with a.PIF,.EXE, and a.BAT, Explorer treats them all the same. This allows for theoretically non-executable file (e.g..PIF) to be executables in disguise.As for the coupling with Internet Explorer, several URL pass-thrus have been exploited on Windows to force Windows Explorer into executing files passed by Internet Explorer. Thus the coupling between the browser and the "shell" is bad. Finder is a b

Being infected by spyware and adware, however, relies on the security of the browser, and being infected with a worm relies on the security of the operating system's Internet connectivity.

This is true only if you assume that every single malware and worm infection has been caused by a vulnerability in the browser, which is clearly not the case. I think that the vast majority of infections occur because people are simply naive and careless. Most of the fastest-spreading Windows worms in history have requir

I think that the vast majority of infections occur because people are simply naive and careless. Most of the fastest-spreading Windows worms in history have required significant user interaction to be successful.

I think you are factually incorrect. The studies I've seen all indicate while there are more malware programs that require user interaction than there are automated ones, there are more infections and they spread faster when they require no interaction. The majority of infections to date are the

The majority of infections to date are the result of worms that require no interaction from the user.

I disagree, by simple observation. Every single infected machine I've ever seen infected with something was a direct result of the lack of patching or user action. And believe me, I've seen quite a few.

This is due in large part to the fact that Windows does a very poor job of informing the user what is data (and very low risk) and what is an executable (and very high risk).

How about the tiny fact that under windows if you execute an app it is not hard for it to infect system files SILENTLY in such a way that it is utter hell to get it removed again.. Yet I cant see a way of doing this under OSX. OSX pops up a "gimmie your administrator password" box when it runs and every Mac owner I know is paranoid when they see it because it does not happen very often. Under windows, users are so used to warning windows and windows asking permission popping up every 30 seconds during an

I don't know all the details, but certainly if you type a URL into Windows Explorer after installing IE 7, rather than handling it itself (and morphing into IE), it launches the system default browser to handle it. So if I type "http://slashdot.org" into Wi

Not so. You still need a firewall to monitor outgoing connections (which might be launched by malware) and to be protected even if some program (malware or not) decides to open some ports without your consent or knowledge. Also, to make sure you're not giving the same privileges to people in the internet as to people on your LAN (you might have a shared printer or disk).

Because people understand the concept behind nails and tires and don't understand the concepts behind viruses. To make it more accurate...
Related news: A tire changing shop decided to show how a carniverous squirrel can chew through a tire, and then started selling squirrel proof tires.

Those of us following malware in general and OS X malware in particular already heard about the new metasploit module [info-pull.com] for OS X exploit released recently that supposedly exploit an unpatched hole in the wireless drivers that shipped with some powerbooks an imacs. It has a lot more potential as a real security issue than this reported proof of concept, since this one has no automated mechanism to spread and no remote vulnerability or any vulnerability for that matter. It is simply code running as it is supposed to with the privileges it is supposed to have. It is no more the result of a flaw in the system than "rm" is.

As for this "virus" it is a demonstration of a problem, but one that is so widespread and common it will be dismissed by the majority of the security community out of hand. The problem is, this code (when run) has permission, by default, to do too much and the user is not notified by the OS of what it is doing. The same can be said of most any desktop OS these days. The granularity of permission is basically: none, everything the user can do, or anything. That is insufficient to deal with software that may or may not be trusted.

Interestingly enough, Apple has announced the inclusion of application signing and Mandatory Access Controls in OS X 10.5. Theoretically, unsigned applications like this could be placed in a very limited trust level by default and as such, would not have permission to edit random user files because the MAC ACL would stop it. Viruses and trojans would have a big roadblock. Imagine downloading some random program like this, double clicking it, and OS X informing you not only that it is a new application, but also pulling up a dialogue that says something like "The application 'macarena.sh' wants to modify 122 applications in your Applications folder. This behavior is characteristic of a virus. (stop it from changing them)(let it change them)(view advanced options/details)."

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Apple is the first to bring SELinux's granularity of security to grandmother's everywhere in a usable way.

Seems like Apple packages by default contain all the libraries and things they need to run -- an offshoot of the NeXT packaging system. Shared libraries don't seem to be as heavily used on OSX. So why not by default chroot installed applications and possibly setuid them to "nobody"? Possibly even drop a strong capability model in there so that the application has to request permission to do stuff like open network connections or listen on sockets. The regular end user might still just blindly accept everyth

So why not by default chroot installed applications and possibly setuid them to "nobody"? Possibly even drop a strong capability model in there so that the application has to request permission to do stuff like open network connections or listen on sockets. The regular end user might still just blindly accept everything but it'd make it a lot harder for an executable to do any damage in the default sandbox.

For Leopard, Apple has ported TrustedBSD's mandatory access controls, so even if Apple doesn't do t

right, that's exactly what I thought. Is the #SN available at serialz.to yet? To be honest I haven't seen a virus since the 90s and wouldn't mind one again now. Oh the boredom of the OSX platform . . .

Switchback [lowendmac.com] was not really noticed that much either. It only could infect 7 to 8 million OSX based Macs. Still it shows that AppleScript and Safari are weak links in the OSX armor that can be exploited by someone if they try really hard enough to make it work with newer versions of OSX.

Mac Users are like the old Amiga users, thinking that their platform is so secure that no virus is written for it, so there is no need for antivirus programs. The Amiga users figured this, because MS-DOS was targeted by virus

Switchback was not really noticed that much either. It only could infect 7 to 8 million OSX based Macs.

Umm, the exploit was released after it was patched, three years ago, if I recall. Given automatic update, not much of an issue. I don't think I've ever seen it and I have a signature running against a class A and then some.

Still it shows that AppleScript and Safari are weak links in the OSX armor

Of course the browser will always be a weak spot, it's going on to the Web and constantly downloading unt

I mean, the story posting? Is it a cron job?Like, every two weeks we see, "$ASSHAT_ANTI_VIRUS_COMPANY sez there is something not entirely unlike an OSX worm in the wild, and uh, Mac users have been lulled into a false sense of security, and uh no Mac user has ever actually seen a real virus in the wild because they're not all that popular, and um, like, we should all go buy us some Anti-Virus software."

Symantec said that it will release an edition of Norton Anti-Virus for OSX which detects viruses for Windows.

That is exactly what the current OS X anti-virus solutions do. Like the anti-virus software that Microsoft requested for FreeBSD (back when Hotmail was running on non-windows OSes), the primary purpose of the OS X solutions is to contain threats that might target Windows. i.e. A Mac might not be able to be infected, but it could be an accidental carrier. Having solutions like McAfee Virex [mcafee.com] available g

So, you've been waiting for this day.. and if you RTFA, the day isn't here yet. The first commenter gets mod'd troll and he brings up the very topical point that Apple news gets blown out of proportion. I hope he gets mod'd back because it's a perfect non-trolly response to this troll.I was about to type up why OSX is better as a consumer *nix desktop OS but I don't care anymore. I give up on prejudice OSist people. Some people just don't want to try something out for themselves, for fear of switching

The anti-virus companies *ARE* responsible for all the viruses that are made!

I have long believed this to be to be more or less the case.

Maybe not all viruses, and maybe not all anti-virus companies, but to stoke up the AV market by chucking a few thousand dollars to some shady programmers in return for them writing virii seems too obvious and idea for it not to happen.

Not that I don't love a good consipracy theory, but do you really think all those shady programmers would be able to keep their mouths about what they have done? The hardest part of a conspiracy is not pulling something off, but keeping everyone who knows about it either quiet or dead...

If a story came out a programmer was hired by an anonymous "suit" to write a virus, it would be interesting even if the "suit" was unknown. I mean look at all the articles popular on Slashdot without anything interesting to say...

Of more concern are exploits in the UNIX level of the operating system.

Not speaking to your specific issues, but OS X and most Linux distros are in the same boat when it comes to general security. It's hard to make a worm for them, the average script kiddie won't cause you any problems, but a dedicated hacker or security expert can get in if you leave any openings (like sshd without a firewall). This could be just a dictionary attack on a weak password or it could be an unpublished exploit in some other